While monitoring the government procurement portal, journalists noticed a large sum in the work plan of the «Ladushki» kindergarten in the Altai district of the East Kazakhstan region.
According to Ratel.kz, the institution planned to procure a service for providing access to information resources for the sum of 154,189,000 tenge.
As indicated on the portal, the procurement was carried out by direct contracting with a single source, and the contract is active. However, the document itself was not available on the government procurement website.
Journalists sent a request to the Akimat of the Altai district asking them to clarify which information resources the preschool institution is gaining access to, which specific services are included in the list, how justified such a significant sum is, and whether such large-scale expenditure from the budget could have been avoided.
The district education department stated that they were no less surprised than the journalists. According to them, the amount that should have been planned is just over 200,000 tenge.
«The State Public Enterprise 'Ladushki Kindergarten' of the Education Department for the Altai District of the East Kazakhstan Region Education Department was transferred to the trust management of the 'Marat-Sultan' LLP in September 2018 for a period of 5 years. In 2024, the contract was extended for another 7 years, therefore work on the government procurement portal is not being carried out. Due to the need to connect to the government procurement web portal, a contract was concluded with the Centre for Electronic Finance», the response states.
The department explained that there is no contract on the government procurement portal because it was concluded with a single source and only the access is paid for, not specific services and purchases. At the same time, the education department claimed that an accountant had made a mistake when specifying the procurement amount.
«An error was made by the accountant when specifying the amount of the contract for providing access to information resources. In fact, the contract should have been concluded for the amount of 210,642.86 tenge, instead of 154,189,000 tenge», the Altai district education department responded.
After the journalists' request, the authorised body sent a request to cancel the erroneous contract to the technical support of the government procurement web portal in order to make changes and adjust the amount in the plan.